VITFORUM Tirsdag 1.10.13 Sophia Efstathiou: How we Manage to Manage ‘Knowledge’ Sophia Efstathiou is a Researcher at the Program for Applied Ethics, NTNU. She has worked on central topics in the philosophy of science and medicine. At present, she is in a research group together with Rune Nydal (NTNU Philosophy), Astrid Lægreid (NTNU Molecular Medicine and Cancer Research), Martin Kuiper (NTNU Biology), and the lecture will be about work in that group. She writes: Working in an interdisciplinary group of philosophers and systems biologists we ask: How can we better construct the scientific approach called systems biology? We focus on work known as “knowledge management”, which in the life sciences involves taking care of information published in the biomedical literature through the construction and manipulation of ontologies and knowledge bases. I will reflect on our group’s submission of knowledge about transcription regulation into the database of the Gene Ontology Consortium and TFcheckpoint.org Domain-specific knowledge of a form and type native to molecular biology is currently being founded into hybrid epistemological domains infrastructured and conditioned by knowledge and competencies native to the computer sciences and artificial intelligence (AI). Systems biology articulates a vision of biological knowledge that can be managed systematically: collected, assembled, computationally analysed, understood, communicated and built upon systematically. At the same time, the effect of structured controlled vocabularies and computer-reasonable claims can be totalising or oppressive, if not tedious and irrelevant, for biologists whose knowledge is to be systematised –and without a clear benefit. Cross-disciplinary buy-in that is crucial for the field to progress is thus limited. In response three narratives can be fleshed out that motivate work in biological knowledge management: (1) a preservation narrative, to ensure that published knowledge is not ‘lost’ to us when e.g. rates at which new knowledge is published don’t match the time we have to read; (2) a narrative of democratization or making common, open and available knowledge that is otherwise kept from us, e.g. in publications that are copyright protected; (3) a mobilization story, of how available knowledge formulated under these new rules is fine-tuned or enhanced, transformed in ways that enable new scientific research, such as systems biology. ANTIKVARIATET, Nedre Bakklandet 4, kl. 18.30-20.30, baren er åpen fra kl. 18.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 02:54:19 +0000
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